An absurd, quantum send up of "Dr. Who", "Monty Python", and "Flash Gordon" invades sci-fi comedy. Transmogriphysicist extraordinaire Sm'rsh*Tang and his itinerant lackey L'oot*Thr Fnord pursue the megalomaniacal Dr. Zook into the 7th dimension to recapture their stolen ohnivak, which holds the secret to dimensional transference. Once there, they stumble into a heinous plot the evil doctor and his minions, the Multi-Dimensional Chiefs of Staff, have hatched to hijack the astral plane. Foiling the plot, they are captured and cast into a maximum security holding facility. They immediately affect a bold escape. While being pursued, they are forced to cold warp into the 5th dimension, a transmogriphysical impossibility. With their equipment hopelessly malfunctioning, they find themselves amazed within a labyrinth off on a tangent of the 3rd dimension. They soon realize they have stumbled onto the secret staging base of the Multi-Dimensional Chiefs of Staff and determine Dr. Zook is planning to use the ohnivak to wage an all out assault to gain control of the multiple dimensions. Undaunted, Sm'rsh*Tang and L'oot*Thr set out to stop Dr. Zook and claim ultimate victory in the ongoing battle for control of the multiverse.
"Off On A Tangent" is Richard S. Bailey's second novel. He has worked as a writer, producer, director, designer, actor, film and sound editor, business manager, publicist, marketing director, and consultant in theatre, film, television, and radio. He is the recipient of the LA Weekly Award as a Director, DramaLogue Awards for Producing, Directing, and Design, as well as European Press awards as an actor. He majored in theatre and minored in film at San Francisco State College during the tumultuous '60's. In the San Francisco area, he was an on air sports reporter in local radio, produced talk radio, worked as a film editor in local television and began working as a professional actor. In Los Angeles he hosted the weekly radio show "Theatre Talk", worked in film, radio and theatre production and worked as an actor in radio and theatre. His plays have been produced in the United States and Europe. He worked with 1969 Nobel Literary Prize recipient Samuel Beckett at the West Berlin Academy of Art in 1977. He was Executive Director/News Director of the Deaf Broadcast Network, Associate Director of the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre and Los Angeles Theatre Center, Producing Director of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, and Artistic Director of Theatre Z. His plays "Deus Ex Machina and The Hands of the Beholder", "Window Pieces" have been produced in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He translated "Growing Absurd", six short plays by early French absurdist Jean Tardieu into English which have been presented in American colleges and universities. He has adapted and published two collections of story theatre styled plays for children, "Famous Victorian Fairy Tales" and "Victorian Tales of Elves and Fairies" and a series of five "Bailey Family Story Books" of fairy tales from the 19th century as well as Arthur Symonds translation of Charles Beaudlaire's "Poems in Prose". He has written about conspiracies, both real and imagined, on several websites.
